Friday, January 20, 2012

My editor at Vice asked me to say something about the interminable Republican debate schedule. He's a nice person, and worth following on Twitter, so I can't bring myself to hold this request against him.

If one thing leaps out at anyone watching more than a few of them, it's the homogeneity of the ideas and approaches presented. Click the Bachmann to read more:

Due to space constraints, one thing that I wished I could have talked about more was this: if you confine people to a tiny ideological sphere and then demand they differ from one another, all you can expect are marginal conflicts born more out of personal testiness than significant engagement with concepts.

Thus you have those moments when Romney and Gingrich — or any pair (last night it was Santorum and Gingrich) — turn to face each other, conflate minor quibbles into massive ideological breaches and bitchily try to undermine each other via forgettable clauses. When you see this, you're seeing the political equivalent of two clone-stamped 1980s valley girls arguing over whether Corey Feldman or Corey Haim is the hottest person on the planet. It only matters because the people involved are this fucking emptyheaded, and they only came to blows on this issue because they insanely both accept the underlying thesis that, "The most beautiful person on the planet is named Corey." This is The Lost Boys as politics, only substitute interpretations of "Reagan" for "Corey," make a drinking game out of it, and you will die soon.